Summary of legal cases, statistics and media coverage as of November 2012

In early 2010, Halmstad District Court handed down three judgments and several people were sentenced to prison for benefit fraud. These cases involved people pretending to be disabled, as well as other types of crimes, such as tax evasion and fraudulent timesheets that also figured in the subsequent discussion. In 2011 about 20 assistance companies were investigated, and two more people were convicted in February 2012.http://assistanskoll.se/20120209-Dom-mot-agare-till-assistansforetag-i-Halland.html. According to Karl Arne Ockell, Halland Police, the cases were discovered because the timesheets were digitized and the Swedish Social Insurance Agency shared information with the police and other authorities. He believes that organized crime is involved, with branches all over Sweden, and would like to see legislative changes, such as stricter requirements for medical certificates. The cases received considerable media attention, especially from newspapers, as well as the TV show P1-morgon and the radio show P1 STUDIO ETT.

Stig Orustfjord, Social Insurance Agency, said in an interview that two kinds of fraud occur: pure rogue companies (the exact meaning of this is unclear) and fraudulent reporting of assistance hours used. He believes some people have a culture that views assistance benefits as a sum of money rather than a number of assistance hours.

Karl Arne Ockell, Halland Police, stated that he believes that one third of the assistance benefit paid out in Halland County was based on false premises, though he admits in an interview in November 2010 that this is speculation.

In February 2012, Susanne Billum, Supreme Administrative Court justice, submitted the report Measures against fraud and misconduct involving the assistance benefit, (Assistanskoll summary) to Maria Larsson, Minister for Children and the Elderly at the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs. Despite criticism of the estimates of how widespread cheating and fraud are, she argues in an interview that fraud and incorrect payments are involved in 9-15% of cases. The report proposes unannounced home visits, more stringent requirements for running assistance companies, requiring organizers to provide information to the Social Insurance Agency and preventing assistants from serving as trustee for the person eligible for assistance. Svante Borg, Swedish Social Insurance Agency, states in one interview in December 2011 and another in November 2012 that the Social Insurance Agency estimates the cost at hundreds of millions of Swedish kronor, which is far from Susanne Billum’s report and the FUT delegation’s calculations. He believes there is an interest in personal assistance among hardened criminals who do not want to see comprehensive monitoring of how assistance hours are used. "Our questioning of individual assistance hours will not have any impact on crime,” he says.